When ChadJordan first launched his Lansing, Mich., gourmet popcorn shop, his marketing budget was, to put it mildly, minimal.

"I started Cravings Popcorn with $5,000 and a credit card," says Jordan. "There wasn’t money to do a huge, traditional media campaign. Although social media isn’t free, it doesn’t cost you money out of your pocket to start."

Jordan's decision to focus on social media to promote his startup might not have been a unique one, but the way he utilized the tools quickly set him apart. While most small businesses doggedly rotate through the expected pattern of product photos, sales announcements and engagement questions, Jordan experimented with new techniques on each network.

Five years after opening and now a well-established part of the Lansing foodie scene, Cravings Popcorn may have the budget for traditional media, but Jordan is sticking primarily with his original plan.

"Now we have community," he says. "You can’t ignore the community, or it will go away. Even though we have dabbled with traditional media, the focus is growing that community."

Getting into emerging networks is certainly one way to keep current in social media, but Cravings has found a way to stay fresh by innovating within the standard social media options. Here are three ways the creative popcorn shop is keeping things popping:

1. Crowdsourcing

Asking engaging questions on Facebook is standard practice for brands, but Cravings has taken customer feedback further. Constantly developing new flavors -- such as spicy curry and dark molasses caramel with sea salt -- is a key part of the shop's business model. To keep the idea machine churning, Jordan began turning to Facebook for flavor suggestions.

"Some of our most innovative flavors have come from our fans," he says, citing such crowdsourced successes as Sriracha and dill pickle. The biggest win to come from Facebook feedback, he says, was one that started as an in-store experiment.

"Bacon cheddar was a flavor that I created but kept under wraps," Jordan says. Somehow, the secret got out -- and onto Facebook. "Folks spread the word, and people were coming to the store wanting cheddar bacon before it was even sold, just because people talked about it all over Facebook. It can really drive product development."

2. Catering to Audiences within the Audience

Though the Cravings Popcorn online community is spread across a variety of networks, Jordan says the key to growing them all is recognizing the differences among the audiences in each and altering the messaging from network to network.

"The Lansing area in particular has a different community on Twitter than we have on Facebook," Jordan says. "The people on Twitter are more sophisticated social media users. To just do straight advertising isn’t as effective."

Instead, Jordan has found success on Twitter acting as a community news source, particularly within his neighborhood of Lansing's Old Town.

Sometimes audiences can vary even within the same network. Jordan started having fun with some goofy YouTube videos, but when reaching out into the business-to-business market, he retargeted his tone.

"Whenever you’re trying to attract other businesses to buy your product, you have to fulfill a need," he says. "It’s not an impulse buy from the other business."

In order to sell his new popcorn and soda meeting-packs to businesses, Jordan opted for more serious, scripted YouTube videos that clearly articulated the issues his product could solve.

"What I was saying in the video," says Jordan, "is, 'here’s a problem you didn’t know that you had, and here’s a solution to that problem. A group of professionals want to be able to trust that the solution is quality and something they’re looking for."

3. Direct Sales

Who says you can't make money on Facebook? By keeping an eye on tech developments, Cravings recently began using Soldsie, a platform that allows the popcorn shop to sell products directly from Facebook.

"You create something like a shopping cart, and once you create your item, you post it on your Facebook page," Jordan says. "All they have to do is type 'sold' [in a comment], and then the popup comes up and you pay for it, right there."

Brands are often tripping over themselves to keep up with the next wave of social media, but Cravings Popcorn proves there's value to growing a social media presence in another way. Continually innovating on the standard networks can keep a small business growing, evolving and popping toward success.